


current come pull me down

by nymphacae



Category: RWBY
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, Volume 4 (RWBY), get these girls some therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 19:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30009873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphacae/pseuds/nymphacae
Summary: i won't take a breath, i wanna drownpyrrha nikos lives.
Relationships: Pyrrha Nikos/Ruby Rose
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	current come pull me down

**Author's Note:**

> i know she loves me through thick and [thin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY9DNZ10Mm0)

Pyrrha Nikos could die for many things.

She could die in combat — this is suitable: as prized student and record champion she was near expected to have a great statue to her name, telling of her grandeur and how she beheld her Huntress spirit until the very end.

She could die to protect Beacon from crumbling, to save the people who could not harness the strength against Grimm.

She could die under the heed of the Fall Maiden's greatness; not because she is worthy but because there is a usurper who is less so.

She could die against Cinder Fall, drawing out her downfall like clockwork wearing thin, just a bit longer until someone comes in and fixes what she was not able to do.

She could die sheltering the body of Jaune Arc, twitching with death under the arrow that hit the chink in his armor, struck his heart, and has not stopped striking her own.

She could die for many things.

She could not live for any of those now.

-

And so the world marches on, relentless, determined to resolve this deep scar of history between pages like this had meant nothing. There is already _so much_ badness in the world; maybe Pyrrha had been blind to it before, but that was certainly not the case now.

Jaune was — he is — a fool, because he had made the fatal mistake of presuming she was built to last long; somehow he thought his life was less than that.

_If I had just trained more. Been stronger. Maybe Amber could've taken me. Maybe Cinder could've... Maybe…_

Sleep was a problem; it'd taken _much_ too long for her calico bruises, her cavernous cuts to begin healing over, lacking the aid of REM. Her aura registered at a molasses pace. Her limbs are stiff from misuse and life moves sluggishly like she's viewing it from the inside of an aquarium. _She was supposed to die back there._

She strains to hold conversation with her team: _How are you feeling, same old? Oh, yes, me too. I miss Jaune too. Like there’s a gap, right? Alright, well. Goodbye._

The medicine waned in dosage and the condolence cards were arriving less frequently. Her mother urged her out of bed more; it was beautiful outside, she said. The snow was beginning to melt, and your friends are here.

Grief is harder to bear than any weapon of steel. She learned how to hold a sword before a hand.

Earth is allowed to thaw and grow. It was built to. She was not.

-

Ruby has no trouble shifting into authority so soon — she had been born for this position, _literally_ born into it.

And so the daughter of a lost war takes up her scythe and parades this ragtag army of splintered teens through the forest. She seeks justice where it’s become too heavy for Pyrrha to bear alone.

Pyrrha adheres to the objectives Ruby bestows; her shoulders are lined and collarbones sharp; she awaits millstones to be wrung tight around her neck. Ruby's mission — perhaps it matters, but also, perhaps not — is a task, and a task needs to be completed.

Living is moreover penance than a sworn duty. But here Pyrrha is, walking with Miló and Akoúo̱ both freshly-polished and upgraded (thank you, Ruby), sweating until her skin is as sheen as her bronzen armor — it's too hot for layers, but minefields can look like wildflower fields if you're not careful.

Nora babbles delightfully about this development: it’s a step in the right direction she says. Ren remains stagnant about the aspect of everything, but Pyrrha spots his feet stalling, or the flick of his eyes at tiny snaps. If Ruby needs us, then we’ll be here for her, Ren says. Jaune would want that.

Yeah, Pyrrha says. Maybe.

And so she marches every day into the next like it’s rehearsal for walking to her own coffin.

-

"I have some doubts," Pyrrha admits at long last, when they're halfway to Mistral and there is no turning back _(to what?)_ "Aren't you afraid that this will all be a lost cause?"

"It can't be," Ruby says at once. "We've come this far, haven't we? 

She is not a leader, she is a soldier. Jaune was supposed to make these decisions and she would execute what he asked of her. She can't...she _wasn't_ designed to be this. Nora and Ren deserve more than what she can't offer.

"Ruby," Pyrrha begins with very cautious footing. She swallows hard. "I appreciate what you've done for us. But you need to understand what you're up against — what happened at Beacon, don't you think that it was just our warning?"

Ruby has gone very still and won't look at her.

"You're a wonderful girl, but you aren't meant to be Remnant's saviour. Not alone, and not without more casualties."

"I'm tired of hearing all that," Ruby snaps. "Why can't I save everyone?"

Pyrrha opens her mouth. Thinks of nothing kind. Closes it.

"You can hate me for getting there to save your life and not his—" 

"I don't hate you!"

Ruby stands. Her tone is flat like what hides beneath dark waters.

"I don't regret anything I did at Beacon if it means you're here now."

Finally she looks at her; Pyrrha is arrested under that pale stare, ruthless as moons, until she walks back to the fire to debrief with the others.

Pyrrha's lungs fossilize in the space which occupies her chest, where a heart is supposed to sit. She forgets to breathe until it burns.

Something phenomenal has happened here.

-

As they walk, Pyrrha studies Ruby Rose leading the entourage.

Everyone knows Ruby Rose — her name holds no introduction, it's just _known._

But Ruby...

Ruby snorts ugly when she isn't supposed to be laughing. She sleeps like the dead and burns all the meat she cooks. She fights like death is a minor drawback and she holds the hopes of Remnant on her back because they have become her own.

Ruby smiles, but it takes a lot for that grin to ride her cheeks up — rosy and round, crinkling the underside of her eyes stained purple. 

She has trouble initiating conversation; Pyrrha has found that Ruby is better at the whetstone, crafting machines like it's a love language. She doesn't strive to be friendly nor a leader — it just seems to be the title which makes her feel respected and listened to. Kindness is a weapon too; Ruby Rose flourishes it as fluently as Crescent Rose.

But despite her social roadblocks, Ruby draws back to walk with Pyrrha. Pyrrha, whose worth is petering out — she walks with her in stride, so Pyrrha almost forgets how she barely comes up to her shoulder.

Ruby offers her morsels of food (she's got a sweet tooth), plays with her hair (she loved braiding Yang's), tells morbid jokes till she laughs (her uncle's signature), and polishes Miló and Akoúo̱ ("Just 'cause!")

"I'm afraid I won't be good company for much longer," Pyrrha giggles a little; it's been a week now and Ruby hasn't let up on letting Nora lead the way. She sits snug beside Pyrrha and toys with Crescent Rose, searching for faults.

"Not to me." Ruby is sincere. Her eyes go steely, like this is a war too. "I don't think you could _ever_ bore me, Pyrrha."

—The problem with Ruby Rose, Pyrrha discovers very quickly, is that she is the paradigm of every good thing to the point where it’s uncertain if spring came first or Ruby’s smile.

The problem with Ruby Rose is she loves unfettered, like storms and like hate; she wears her heart too open on her sleeve, but the world is so very greedy and just takes what it wants. The weather bends to her temper, mercurial, and she is suited for Maidenship so greatly that to Pyrrha it’s painful to recognize.

The problem is Ruby is starkly bare of the glistening treasures she deserves to be adorned in. So the diamonds which lack being thrown onto her like garlands instead inhabit the bright opulence of her eyes.

Ruby Rose is a walking shrine that worships anything worth fighting for. Which also means she’s going to attract trouble. Which means this is going to be a very dangerous journey.

But Pyrrha still walks with her, because, well, what is a Huntress without a cause?

-

Pyrhha vomits up what little greens Ren had scavenged for dinner, her head spinning and throat scorched. Sometimes what lurks in her hindbrain just can't stay beneath the floorboards. Sometimes she wakes and prepares to die.

Ruby holds her red hair back in fistfuls before taking her body into her arms, nestling it close until it feels like it's hers again. She regains composure, slowly coming to the world that doesn't have an arrow aimed to her chest, nor Cinder's face against the flames, nor Nevermores, nor Jaune's corpse, nor Penny’s mangled one.

"I'm going to make things right, Pyrrha," Ruby says, cusping her face. Her hands aren't soft; this knocks Pyrrha nearly right out of her stupor. They're cold and calloused. They don’t hold anything delicately. "I promise. Jaune won't have died for nothing, I _swear._ I won't let him."

Pyrrha's lungs nearly give out, sputtering out sobs. She reaches for the only solid purchase, this of now being Ruby's wrists. "Please don't."

-

Pyrrha wakes up beneath treetops; the morning sun spangles her like fractures of molten gold. She sees the bodies of her friends beneath sheets, their mounds softly rising, falling. The small pebbles of Ruby's spine brush with her own.

It’s a beautiful day and she decides to live.

-

Kissing Ruby is...it just _is._ There’s no preamble to it; they collide in a messy unison like Pyrrha had flicked her wrist and met her halfway like magnets.

But of course it’s Ruby Rose, Pyrrha thinks. Because it’s always Ruby Rose.

It’s...at first, naturally, a very odd sensation. Her impromptu first kiss session with Jaune hardly counts in hindsight — there’d been no strategy and she realizes now that their lips mashed up really awkward. 

But here she senses the rhythm to love and being loved demands practice. Plus, there’s a whole lot of debunking too, because if kisses are supposed to taste like people then Pyrrha can’t say chapped lips and bad breath tell a whole lot about Ruby besides that they’ve been hiking for days, and they’re both sweaty and a little hungry.

Ruby straddles her stomach to pin her down and there is — _some_ thing very hot and new blossoming in the deep pit of Pyrrha's stomach, cresting like the formation of mountains. Hammering up the staircase of her ribs at every soft give of Ruby’s skin beneath clothes — what’s concealed is now a gauzed layer away from being _right there._ To unravel what she wants like the understitchings of a burst loom.

All Pyrrha can feel through this oozing puddle of sunlight in her is the slap of embarrassment when Ruby just grazes the jutting chords of her throat and she _sings_. Meanwhile Ruby’s little noises grow crescendo because Ruby Rose wasn’t taught to be shameless, or at least missed the memo on it.

Suddenly the world invents brand new colors and the sun is shining a bit brighter. Suddenly, for just a brief, horrific moment, it is not a terrible thing to exist.

They break away because they always must; they gasp like caged birds released. Pyrrha feels a pulsing sore on her lip and tastes copper. Ruby isn't in a rush to get off her lap but still retracts some; if Pyrrha was a lesser girl she would hold her there longer and tighter and a bit more desperate.

"I want," Ruby narrows her eyes, straining focus, "I want...I _want_ to keep trying this."

(She notes how her friend's hands are sprawled out to the front of her like needy claws, reaching for a crevice that neither can comprehend yet.)

Pyrrha giggles a little. "We can't seem to want things very well, can we?"

"All I _do_ is want," Ruby's brows lower; Pyrrha realizes she's staring at her bruised lower lip.

Pyrrha feels herself smile. "Well, I never want much of anything."

Ruby dismantles herself off Pyrrha's lap so she can get up; they both rid themselves of pins and needles before Ruby turns back to her and says, "Try.”

-

Nora and Ren sit on the riverbank; they're stitched at the hems like cloth and so Pyrrha has always sought them out as one. They turn to her expectantly, holding her appearance with only light surprise.

She shuffles a little, dirtying her heels against the wet grit of the sand. "May I...sit with you?"

Any space she occupies is where he should be, she fears they know that too. (She wonders if they know she is growing less awful for not being in his place.)

They exchange a small smile, and at once their expressions open to joy. They wave her over.

It hurts to venture over the cleft in heels, so they help her over with a shared chuckle. She smiles so big her cheeks hurt, and for the first time in a while her feet feel like they're on solid ground.

-

Each town has different methods of gratitude, more often than not in the form of food. Pyrrha chews on the butter cookies a kind elder offers, upon Ruby’s insistence. In another village they draw out a pack of Grimm and the herbal teas they’re given are unlike any other blend Pyrrha has experienced back home — Beacon had such basic, stale teas which tasted watery.

They usually all sit together at chabudais or kotatsus or, sometimes, just on mats; Pyrrha watches them talk around her, as her job is to smile politely and compliment the chefs.

Pyrrha is nibbling on a scone one day after a battle and it hits her very suddenly: that she loves lemon lavender scones and she is alive to eat them.

Something else hits her with the same momentum:

That she loves Ruby Rose, and she is alive to cherish that.

-

They’re walking uphill behind Ren and Nora when their hands meet. There aren’t the fireworks that Pyrrha felt with Jaune at slight touches, that hopeless want.

It feels like water pouring in. A window, opened.

-

“Of course we miss him,” Nora murmurs; they’ve both slowed their space to walk with her. “But we’re glad that she didn’t take you with him too, y’know?”

The birdsong flutters overhead; Pyrrha absentmindedly watches Ruby ahead of them: her cloak flaps against a gentle wind and she doesn’t look back to any of them once.

Pyrrha’s throat tightens. They both slow down even more, arms within reach of catching her if needed.

“It wasn’t— my fault,” Pyrrha spits the words out like nails, and they hurt just as much on the way out. Her fists shake at her sides.

“We know,” Ren says, and pats her shoulder, and smiles.

She doubles over and they reign her in until the stormclouds pass.

-

Pyrrha is foolish to think that just because she is noticing the sun a lot more that everything will be fine; they’re speaking through teeth and fingers one night and she notices that Ruby’s body is shaking.

And Pyrrha has this terrible, delayed realization that oh, she is very small.

She should’ve _known_ — her own grief is so embedded into everything she owns, she should’ve recognized this form of it too. Ruby is a small girl: she can hardly stomach food nowadays (how did she not _see?_ ), let alone a wide and terrible sorrow.

Pyrrha props herself up and takes her face, holds it up, whispers, “Hi.”

Ruby surges forward to chase down that grief again, like it’s the same taste as her own.

Pyrrha pulls away. “It’s okay,” she says, over and over again, however long it takes. Her thumbs keep at the creases of Ruby’s eyes which glisten terrible. “It’s okay.”

Ruby collapses into sobs.

She catches her. Her body flinches so visceral that Pyrrha’s heart twists like she’s witnessing death again. But she holds her, still — it’s so easy to forget the unkind bulk of Ruby’s muscles; her true strength is folded in the crevices of her like snares.

There's something deeply, innately wrong with this girl in her arms, and that realization is desolate: _this_ is Ruby Rose. The girl who wears her heart like a badge. And yet. So much of her buried like tombs, unseen.

Pyrrha can only support her against the pillows and hold her half-bare until the ferocious tremors still to just hiccups. Ruby never tells her what's wrong, but Pyrrha stays anyway.

"It's okay," she tells her, caressing her hair. "You have always done the very best you can. You're the bravest girl I know, Ruby. It's the bravest thing in the world to live."

When Ruby emerges, she is swollen red so the moonlight drips along her face like melted wax. Her skin has such a lovely warm undertone, her blush melts into her skin like watercolor, bleeding down her neck. Her eyes ripple with something unfathomable.

Jaune’s death has never gathered dust in Pyrrha’s travels. Nor Penny’s, nor Beacon’s. But there is a new weight, boulder-heavy and feather-light, that Pyrrha has seen she’s been carrying for quite some time now. Ruby Rose is not one of these weights, not even now, when she’s a mess that needs a good wash and maybe some water.

They take turns carrying this torch — perhaps it’s hope. Perhaps it’s something else entirely, something that will take every day to uncover just a bit more.

-

The resources dwindle. The cities they find are ash. Ruby clasps her guardian's hands the entire journey until her palms are stained with the same purple seeping through his bandages. She doesn't say a word for days, like his poison had paralyzed her, too.

Pyrrha turns to face her friends. She points Miló’s spearhead to the left and says, "Let's go." 

They follow her without delay. They say they will follow her anywhere.

-

They're in Mistral, overlooking the buildings which stack against cliffs and waterfalls; the night sky is crisp. They sit back to back on the railing.

"I'm going to live," Pyrrha says at last. "I'm going to fight for what I've loved and lost, and...I'm going to cherish both of those with all my heart."

Ruby's weight anchors her own, and she feels Ruby's head tilt to the heavens against the back of her neck. Their hands are already entwined.

"Good," Ruby says. After a while, softer: "Good."


End file.
